Pages

Thursday, December 13, 2012

What to wear in the winter...when you live in Poland...

... and you want to prove to your family that you know how to keep your kids from freezing in the Polish winter (just a smidge of passive aggressive sarcasm there but I'm allowed every once in a while, right)?

In an effort not to spew too many of my feelings and thoughts about this coming holiday season and the fact that you can't even tell Christmas is coming in Poland unless you go directly into the Old Town. And even more especially in our house, where usually I would have wreaths and garlands of all kinds and lights up inside the house and music and what not in the air, cookies baking, nativity sets arranged beautifully, etc.... and this year...well, you saw the extent of our holiday decorating thus far a couple posts ago...

...in an effort to avoid all that... I thought I would take this time to share a funny (to us) anecdote from the past week.

Felek, with the attention span of a gnat, and the imagination of Dali, often "can't find" things. Usually what he "can't find" is whatever he is supposed to be looking for, which, more often than not is sitting right underneath his very nose. Sometimes, yes, even in this cold and blustery Polish winter, this includes his shoes. He has "sport shoes," rather rugged little things, I think. Certainly capable of being worn from the car door to the door of Church and back again, less than 100 feet. But no, Felix, wasn't wearing his sport shoes on this particular night of said anecdote, he was wearing....his Crocs. Crocs! And no one noticed until AFTER Mass, because silly me, I thought he would know. The temperature was -7 C/20 F. He had on socks. He figured that part out, thank goodness. The wearing of these Crocs prompted this little interchange between Martin and his Aunt...

(Martin's Aunt, walking directly toward him with such urgency and purpose that we thought she was going to comment on how well behaved they were during Mass, because on this particular night they were angels, on the very front row (actually, Kacio got away from me and ran up the middle aisle, all the way from the back where I was holding him in the freezing Narthex, laughing, just as the priest was holding up the Host during consecration...but he doesn't count)...

Aunt: Marcin, the children need boots! Winter boots!

Martin: I know, I know. We just haven't had the need for winter boots yet. We go from house, to car, to building, we don't really spend much time in the snow...

Aunt: (whispering) Marcin, can you afford winter boots?

She had assumed that of course, if our children weren't wearing winter boots (kozaki) then we must not be able to afford them because there couldn't possibly be any other reason why they wouldn't be wearing them.

The very next day we went out and bought them these...

I have to admit, those little baby boots are adorable. And Lina now owns the most stylish article of clothing in this whole house. I'm still wearing my Birks.

Hey Olivia, It's me... fellow Texan living in Warsaw. Today was 12 F/ - 10 C which is the coldest weather I've ever felt :( The last week has been below zero but with all the snow it was bearable. Today I felt it in my bones! To top it off, we don't have a car here and we walk to the bus stop every morning with three young children. We were all missing the warmth of Texas today. I like your new boots! We had to get some a couple of weeks ago along with some ski pants and better mittens and gloves. We are still working on building up all of our winter gear. I hear January is the coldest month so I have a little time... right? I'm happy that next week will be in the mid 30's F which I'm beginning to think is warm ;)

I know what you mean. Today it was 5 C outside. 5! Time for short sleeves and Pina Coladas!

This is a bit uncommon I've been told. Usually December is not in the negatives every day and rarely does it snow this much. So it looks like we picked a good year to move here, huh? ;) Oh, it's gonna be a cold one.

Why does it take so long to find all the things you need to keep warm. It feels like we have buying winter clothes for weeks an we still are lacking a few things. Whole other wardrobe! But the snow falling is so pretty.

My husband and I were at the Christmas Market in Berlin Thursday night, and I was complaining of cold feet after walking in the slush for an hour or so (wearing Merrell hiking boots and wool socks). That's when we noticed the 20 something in low top Converse tennies, probably unlaced and no socks! Croc's? Felix would fit right in!

My feet are always cold here and that's with two pair of socks, one woolen. I cannot imagine not having any socks. I bet the Christmas Market in Berlin is really nice though. I've never been to Berlin but I think that is one of the first places we will travel when we take a vacation in the summer. If we don't use our vacation days to go to Croatia to get out of these freezing temps...